Driving Ms. Doors-y

I open and close this door just about every day, often several times each day. It’s the door to the mundane every day, but also to freedom, to new adventures.

I’ve shared before and I’m sharing again a lil’ story about Blue Tootie, my car, called that because she’s Blue (OBVS) and her horn goes toot toot in the cutest Blue Tootie way. For today’s modeling session (she was totes excited to hear she’d be my door today!), she provided the reflection for which the tree could check out its branches. Luckily, after a hearty rain last night, she’s cleaner than yesterday — it’s been a few weeks of snow and salty roads. She needed a bath so the halfsies one last night was most welcome.

Blue Tootie is my… counting… … … sixth car, the second of her exact make and model. I switched to SUVs for a time, when highway driving happened daily (for which one needs more of a tank). I switched back to my teeny sedan once that nonsense ended.

Blue Tootie takes me all kinds of fun places. She traveled the new roads that took me to choir, and continues to do so. This past week at choir, our conductor told us how excited he is to go to a concert next week with one of his favorite performers, even though he wasn’t looking forward to the drive. “I don’t like driving places I’ve not been before,” he said. I could understand that, even though for most of my driving life, that wasn’t me.

Back in the day, I was a happy wanderer, blessed with a bevy of (paper!) maps and a good sense of direction. There was a time, though, after people kept dying faster than I could keep up and also, more importantly, a most important person betrayed me, I lost enough confidence that even driving the unknown roads I used to love was too much to handle. I even had the joy of experiencing a panic attack, in traffic. Good times.

Luckily, I pushed (drove?) through that, and now he’s pushing himself to drive to the unknown, even if it scares him. It’s good to push ourselves beyond our comfort zones (“they” say it, because it’s true). And so, inspired and reminded of that by his comment, Blue Tootie and I decided to take a different — and unknown — way home from choir. After all, I still have maps (GPS now), my awesome sense of direction, and a comfy cute car to enable my journeys.

Blue Tootie’s driver-side door, mostly cleaned by the rain, and showing off her reflective skills with some nearby trees.

How lovely is Blue Tootie. A great shade of blue, actually.
Mine is so filthy, I know now what colour it is… And with all this freezing rain and crapola we’ve been having and they are still calling for, I’ve yet to get her washed. If I do, the door handles will freeze! Ain’t nobody need that extra grief!

And no, I can’t imagine. I’ve found myself going there when stuck in traffic a couple times. I HAVE to go into deep breathing and a meditative repose, like, right there. One time I was doing it when traffic starting moving and I had a line of people honking at me like crazy. I told ’em to piss off after I came out of it.

Oh my … now that’s funny. Reminds me of my wife’s aunt who named her cars. One time she had a contest when all of us submitted names. Knowing she likes Don Quixote, I was surprised when she didn’t select Dolcinea.